Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery) (22 page)

“I know she’s dead, Larry—”

Larry’s voice dropped to a low, menacing level. “Murdered. And she was—”

“What?” Steve flung his arms up, frustrated. “She used you, man.” He patted the air in front of him, placating his brother. “She used me. She used everyone. Surely you can understand that.”

But apparently Larry didn’t see things the way Steve did. He shook his head, his ruddy cheeks turning blotchy. “Uh-uh. She didn’t—”

“She didn’t what?” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Had I said that aloud?

Yep, I must have, because the team’s trainer suddenly stood ramrod straight and whipped his head around to stare at me.

The niggling feeling in my gut intensified. My mind scrambled. There wasn’t any love lost between Steve and Jennifer, that seemed clear. And if the trainer thought Jennifer had wronged his brother, could he be the one behind her death?

Or what if he’d been one of Jennifer’s conquests?

Oh boy.

Steve took a step toward me and I suddenly felt like a trapped animal. I raced through my options. I could take him down with a quick upward thrust of the heel of my hand against his chin, followed by a knee to the groin. But while that was something Dolores Cruz, P.I., would do, it was not something Lola Cruz, Royals Courtside Dancer, could pull off without raising some serious eyebrows.

I wanted to keep my cover intact so I plastered a bewitching—or what I hoped was bewitching—smile on my face, threw my hand up in a wave, and backed toward the door. “I’m so sorry about Jennifer,” I said. “She seemed like such a great girl.”

Larry’s expression softened. “She was. She didn’t deserve what she got.”

“Nobody deserves murder,” I said.

Steve stopped. “Have you always been a dancer?”

“N-no,” I said, shrugging. “I got lucky getting this gig. It’s tough to make it through auditions, but the team lost someone—”

“Another girl who didn’t get what she deserved,” Larry said, shaking his head.

She’d gotten what she wanted, if not what she deserved. “She’s engaged, isn’t she? To a player?”

“But had to leave the team,” Larry snapped. “Damn hypocrites if you ask me.”

“Yeah, maybe they should change the rules, since everyone seems to be doing it,” I said, noticing how nobody quite knew if Rochelle Nolan had been fired or had quit. It was all very vague. “Thanks for the tour. I have to go,” I said, pulling the door open.

“Lola.” Steve moved toward me, but I was already in the hallway, the door closing behind me.

Voices drifted our way and just as Steve caught the door and stepped into the hallway, Victoria and Lance Wolfe rounded the corner.

Victoria looked at me, then at Steve, then back at me. She raised her pencil-thin eyebrows, asking a silent question. Lance wasn’t as subtle. “Well, well, well. Overtime with the trainer, Lola?”

I forced a laugh. “Steve and Larry were just giving me a tour. Great equipment,” I added. “Top-notch facility.”

Victoria and Lance started walking again. I went with them, wondering who else was having an affair with a player and won-dering how Larry knew so much about the dancers.

I felt the weight of Steve’s gaze on my back until we disappeared from his sight.

“What was that about?” Victoria asked once we were in the clear.

Good question.
“I’m not really sure. Larry’s upset about Jennifer’s murder. He got mad at Steve for not showing more respect.” I glanced at the dance coach. “Did you know Jennifer, um…”

She glanced at Lance before answering. “Broke the rules? Yes. I was aware.”

Lance just frowned, disappointed. In his players? The dancers? Probably both.

Not the answer I’d expected, either, Lance
, I wanted to say, although it didn’t surprise me that Victoria saw and knew everything related to her girls. “If you knew, why—”

“Why did I keep her?”

She had an irritating habit of finishing my sentences, but I let it go. “Yes. Since Rochelle had to leave for the same thing.”

“Because she was one of the best. A pro. Vanessa will take her place, but she doesn’t have the same rapport with the girls. Jennifer’s shoes will be tough to fill.”

Like any good P.I., I followed the immediate line of questioning that arose. “Did Vanessa know she was next in line for captain?”

Victoria shook her head, her perfectly coiffed hair remaining perfectly in place. “We don’t have a set hierarchy on the team. She wouldn’t have known, no.”

I pondered this—and the inner workings of the dance team—as I left the arena. My direct line of questioning wasn’t leading me to any answers. I headed straight to Camacho & Associates. The whole
Cuerpo y Alma
thing was still front and center in my mind. I couldn’t help but feel like it was related to Jennifer’s death somehow, someway. Vanessa killing Jennifer so she could become team captain seemed far-fetched. And at this point, I had no connections between the resort and the team—other than Selma.

Chapter Nineteen

The second I set foot in Camacho’s, Reilly, in all her orange-haired glory, dragged me into the bathroom and said, “
¡Ven, ven, ven!
”

“
¿Qué haces?
” I asked her, following up with the English translation, “What are you doing?”

She let the door close behind her but quickly opened it again, poking her head into the hall.

“Reilly? What’s going on?”

“
Chisme
,” she said under her breath. “The best
chisme
ever. E-V-E-R.
E-ver
.”

“
¿Qué?
” I leaned against the sink and waited, trying not to get too excited. Reilly used to be the gossip queen, but since her clandestine affair with Neil had started, she’d gone hit or miss with dishing the office dirt.

“Remember the job I was doing for
el jefe
a while back?” she asked, closing the door again and coming to stand next to me.

“How could I forget?” She’d been babysitting Manny’s daughter. The daughter no one had known he’d even had. The daughter I’d seen in the back of Manny’s truck. Same olive skin, same chiseled features, and a sweet rosebud mouth that had to have come from her mother, whoever
she
was.

“I got some goods.”

Oooh, this had the potential of being
really
good
chisme
. “On his ex-wife?
Dígame
,” I said, on the edge of my seat. Gossip about Manny was something she had to tell me right this minute. He was my mentor, and a super-ex-cop-detective, but he had Javier Bardem charisma and the mystique of Amaury Nolasco—with hair.

She darted her heavily lined eyes around as if someone might materialize out of thin air. “It started last night. Neil and me, we were, um, you know…”

She trailed off, giving me time to fill in the blank.

“Got it. Moving on.” I circled my hand to keep her talking.

“He gets kinda chatty afterward, and he let it slip that
el jefe
and Tomb Raider Girl broke up because of the ex-wife and the daughter. Turns out she doesn’t want to be a step-mommy.”

I stared. “No, really?”

Her eyes scanned the tiny bathroom again—still no ghosts. She leaned in closer to me and dropped her voice.

“Yup.” That was it. Just yup.

“Huh.”

Reilly primped in the mirror, fluffing her Crayola-colored hair and pinching her cheeks. “That’s all I have.”

“Good
chisme
.” But with nothing more to gossip about, we headed back to the conference room, which was as quiet as church during Easter Mass. Who knew where the rest of the associates were? All I cared about was that Sadie was not in my business, which meant I could continue my research on any connections between Jennifer Wallace,
Cuerpo y Alma
, and the Royal Courtside Dancers.

…

I’d come to believe that the least likely suspect is often the one who’s guilty. I didn’t like Trainer Steve, but that didn’t mean he was guilty of murder. Rochelle didn’t have a motive. For Victoria and Lance, maybe, since they were the ones with the double standard, but not for Jennifer. I kept circling around to Selma, much as I didn’t want to ride that train.

She was the sole connection between the dancers and
Cuerpo y Alma
. She was the one who supposedly caught a glimpse of the mysterious boyfriend. She thought she had something to lose if her naturist habit came out.

Pero
I felt like I was missing something about the big picture. Where was Manny when I needed him?

Oh right, in the midst of
As Camacho Turns
, a P.I.
telenovela
.

I hadn’t had any real contact with the players, and nothing led me to suspect any of them. The wives were a possibility, but no one had surfaced as a likely suspect. And what about the other Courtside Dancers? They were the most unlikely suspects in my mind, but it was possible one of them had a grudge against Jennifer. Knowing women and their petty jealousies, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Of course I had no hard evidence against any of them. Manny’s rule of thumb was to form a hypothesis, but I didn’t think an imaginary grudge between women would really fly with him as a viable hypothesis.

Which led me right back around to Selma Mann. I couldn’t believe the youngest dancer on the team and a naturist at heart could be a murderer, but I’d been surprised before.

I sat down at the conference room computer and Googled her.

And found
nada
. White Pages listings and Facebook didn’t give me anything. Selma Mann might be the only person in the world, besides me, who didn’t regularly update her Facebook status. I didn’t keep an active page because it didn’t really go hand in hand with being a private investigator. I wasn’t sure it went with being a nudist, either.

Selma’s last status update was from a few weeks ago. It was a quote:

“The only thing wrong with nudity is a society that says nudity is wrong.” —Bill Pacer

Whoever Bill Pacer was.

I read response after response, backtracking when I saw Jennifer Wallace’s name and her comment.

“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.” —William Blake

Ten people had liked her quote. I went down the list. Selma had liked it. So had Larry Madrino…

I clicked on his picture and leaned closer. Larry Madrino was Trainer Steve’s brother. And he liked Jennifer’s William Blake quote.

I kept reading, stopping again when there was another response from Jennifer.

If only some people would see that nudity means lack of clothing. Sexuality is different. It’s a state of mind. Why can’t people separate the two?

Selma, Larry, and seventeen other people had liked her comment. Selma responded with:

Get naked. Clothes belong in the closet.

Not to Jennifer. Her apartment’s closet had been practically empty, which still struck me as strange. Even a nudist had to dress up. Unless it was simply a love nest. Whatever clothes she wore in were the clothes she wore out.

I clicked on Jennifer’s name, but someone had changed her wall to a Rest in Peace message. I couldn’t see any status posts, but I could see her friends.

Which meant I could see who else might have crossed between Jennifer’s two worlds.

I scoured the list of her friends, jotting down the names of anyone from the dance team, the basketball team, or
Cuerpo y Alma
. The list grew and grew as I clicked on name after name and saw interests and organizations.

“What’s wrong?”

Reilly’s voice brought me out of my Facebook daze. I peered up at her. “What? Nothing.”

She made a face at me, squinting her eyes as if she could read my mind if she tried hard enough. “You’re sighing. More like heaving, actually.”

“I am?” I was? “I guess I was just thinking about how much information this is to sift through.”

She hovered at my shoulder, staring at my list of names. “Yikes.”

My thoughts exactly.

“Nudists, huh? I’m not sure I’m down with that, but I’ll go the distance for you, Lola. No one will ever be able to say Reilly Fuller isn’t loyal and willing to do whatever it takes for a friend. So what are you going to do? Can I help? I’m really not sure about the whole nudie thing, but Neil might like it—”

“Whoa, tiger.” I patted the air to get her to simmer down. “No one said anything about going back to the nudist resort.” And seeing Reilly and Neil in their altogether, together, wasn’t high on my list of things to do.

Although…

“If I get the member list from
Cuerpo y Alma
, I might be able to cross-reference.” I grabbed my cell phone from my purse, pulling out one of the brochures I’d taken from Jennifer Wallace’s dresser. I dug out the rest, rifling through them until I had the resort front and center. Nice. The number was right there on the front of the pamphlet. I dialed. “Please let Tiffany pick up.”

No such luck. It was a man, and I was pretty sure the deep, laid-back voice belonged to Craig Wallace, ex-husband to Jennifer. “All natural, no additives when you dare to go bare at
Cuerpo y Alma
,” he said.

I made my voice bright, batting away the flapping
mariposa
wings in my stomach, but before I could say anything, he continued. “Ms. Cruz, I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away.”

“Caller ID?” I asked, thinking, not for the first time, that I needed to get an incognito phone with a fake ID. Technology was great, but it definitely posed problems for surreptitious investigative moves.

“I like to know everyone here, and everything that goes on here, so, yeah, caller ID.”

I’d been avoiding it, but if Craig was that tuned in, and he had an emotional connection to Jennifer, maybe he needed to be my go-to guy at the nudist resort.

“Craig, right?” I asked, making sure I was talking to the sun-scorched, wrinkly skinned nudist. I clutched the brochures, trying not to stare at them. But I couldn’t pull my gaze away. I listened, zeroing in on the numbers Jennifer had scribbled in the corner of each. What did they mean?